For example, Blue Lane Technologies Inc., a startup in Cupertino, Calif., last week introduced a security appliance called PatchPoint that addresses specific vulnerabilities in Windows and other products. But instead of requiring users to install software on their systems, PatchPoint sits in front of servers and mimics the full functionality of vendor-issued patches. The approach is designed to let IT staffs "hold down the fort" until they're ready to apply the actual patches, said Jeff Palmer, Blue Lane's president and CEO.

Redwood City, Calif.-based Determina Inc. this week is due to announce software that has a similar goal. For the past year, Determina has been selling a "memory firewall" technology that's designed to run inside an application's memory and prevent any activity that's deemed to be inconsistent with normal behavior.

Determina's new Vulnerability Protection Suite combines the memory firewall with a real-time flaw-remediation tool. But unlike Blue Lane's approach, Determina's product works by applying very small bits of corrective code to fix the underlying vulnerability on the server. "The code is literally on the order of a couple of bytes," said Determina CEO Nand Mulchandani, adding that systems administrators can install and uninstall the code "at the click of a button."

Such products can buy IT managers the time they need to do the required amount of regression testing and analysis work on patches, said Christofer Hoff, director of enterprise security services at Western Corporate Federal Credit Union in San Dimas, Calif. WesCorp is an early user of Blue Lane's technology.

The credit union has suffered its share of problems with patches that failed to deploy properly or ended up impairing critical IT services, according to Hoff.